A website (http://www.my3dscanner.com) has a nifty little service that allows you to create a pointcloud (and therefore potentially a fully-realized 3D scan) from a series of photographs taken ~60 degrees apart. You walk around it rather than rotating the object, so this can be used on a statue in a park, or a person holding very, very still.

Still very tricky, but the idea is great. They have a helpful set of instructions on how to photograph correctly and another on how to make a 3D model out of the resulting point cloud. Also, it’s all written in a friendly and cheerful tone, which is even better.

I can’t help it if I like sunsets. The only way to share this one with my wife is for her to click on the photo for the panorama view. I like this one because it is closest to the real colors that evening.

David Software makes a suite of 3-D scanning tools with a low-cost (and probably low-resolution) hardware. You make a little video clip of a laser-line scanner flashing over the object you want scanned against a 3-D calibration box and feed it into their software and a point cloud is generated. Then you use DAVID-Shapefusion to make exportable files to plug into your RepRap or MakerBot.

Cute, huh? I’m guessing it doesn’t work nearly that easily without a lot of tweaking. One reason I’m guessing this is that there is a wiki, which implies a lot of wiggle room and need for lots of (unpaid?) folks to help write the documentation. Looking at the wiki, it’s pretty clear that this is the case. There are problems with lighting, scan angles, different colors of objects, different colors of lasers, etc…but it still seems like a cost-effective way to scan something for 3-D manufacture. I wonder how large an object can be scanned? Be sure to buy your laser from here instead from David Software…it’s about ten times cheaper, and I’m assuming my readers are in the USA.

Trimensional, a 3D scanning application for the current incarnation of iPhone (the one with the user-facing camera), can create a 3D model of an object held close to the phone using the light from four corners of the screen and assembling the video images into a 3D model in STL, OBJ, or PLY format. It’s an app you have to purchase and it’s only for iPhone right now.

Still, it’s another important (because it’s among the first easy to use) application in the chain of innovative methods to create or copy 3D objects with 3D printing.